"Bisson, Terry - Macs (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bisson Terry)

Hard? It was hard, I suppose, but farming is hard too if you think about it. A
farmer may love his hogs but he ships them off, and we all know what for.

You should ask legal services about that. That wasn't part of my operation. We
had already grown 168 and I had to destroy one before he was even big enough to
walk, just so they could include the real one. Ask me if I appreciated that!

It was a second court order. It came through after the macs were in the vats.
Somebody's bright idea in Justice. I suppose they figured it would legitimize
the whole operation to include the real McCoy, so to speak, but then somebody
has to decide who gets him. Justice didn't want any part of that and neither did
we, so we brought in one of those outfits that run lotteries, because that's
what it was, a lottery, but kind of a strange one, if you know what I mean.

Strange in that the winner wasn't supposed to know if he won or not. He or she.
It's like the firing squad, where nobody knows who has the live bullets. Nobody
is supposed to know who gets the real one. I'm sure it's in the records
somewhere, but that stuff's all sealed. What magazine did you say you were with?

Sealed? It's destroyed. That was part of the contract. I guess whoever' numbered
the macs would know, but that was five years ago and it was done by lot anyway.
It could probably be figured out by talking to the drivers who did the
deliveries, or the drivers who picked up the remains, or even the families
themselves. But it would be illegal, wouldn't it? Unethical, too, if you ask me,
since it would interfere with what the whole thing was about, which was Closure.
Victims' Rights. That's why we were hired, to keep it secret, and that's what we
did. End of story.

UPS was a natural because we had just acquired Con Tran and were about to go
into the detainee delivery business under contract with the BOP. The macs were
mostly local, of course, but not all. Several went out of state; two to
California, for example. It wasn't a security problem since the macs were all
sort of docile. I figured they were engineered that way. Is engineered the word?
Anyway, the problem was public relations. Appearances, to be frank. You can't
drive around with a busload of macs. And most families don't want the TV and
papers at the door, like Publishers Clearing House. (Though some do!) So we
delivered them in vans, two and three at a time, mostly in the morning, sort of
on the sly. We told the press we were still working out the details until it was
all done. Some people videotaped their delivery. I suspect they're the ones that
also videotaped their executions.

I'm not one of those who had a problem with the whole thing. No sirree. I went
along with my drivers, at first especially, and met quite a few of the loved
ones, and I wish you could have seen the grateful expressions on their faces.
You get your own mac to kill any way you want to. That's Closure. It made me
proud to be an American even though it came out of a terrible tragedy. An
unspeakable tragedy.

Talk to the drivers all you want to. What channel did you say you were with?